Thinking That We Know

Last week, I attended a wonderful lecture by Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, at the National Academy of Sciences in DC.  The topic of the lecture entitled Thinking that We Know in which Kahneman discussed the sense of truth as a subjective experience.

You can watch the video of Kahneman's entire lecture here. Highly recommended!

Below is a detailed description of the talk. It was based on Khaneman's recent book, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Truth is a philosophical concept, and the shared search for agreed and objective truth is the central mission of science. But the sense of truth is a subjective experience, which falls in the domain of psychology. Carefully reasoned argument is one way to induce a sense of truth, but it is not the only way, or indeed the most common. The distinction between different modes of thinking – fast and automatic vs. slow and controlled – provides a framework for understanding the variety of experiences of truth.

Daniel Kahneman, P.h.D., is a Senior Scholar and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University. His bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was selected by The New York Times as one of its Best Books of 2011. A 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences, Dr. Kahneman has laid the foundation for a new field of research, called behavioral economics.

His many achievements include the Talcott Parsons Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2011and he was recognized with a Distinguished Lifetime Contribution Award in 2007 from the American Psychological Association.

Read more thoughts about Kahneman's lecture by New York Times writer, Andrew Revkin.